Chapter 9

The limousine was at the curb as promised and a woman who looked like she had just stepped out of a streetfighter video game was standing at the rear door. She was every bit as tall as I was at three and a half inches over six feet. In fact, she might actually have that last half inch I had been disappointed about. Her shoulders were almost as wide as mine were and her arms were every bit as muscular. She was dressed in a short-sleeved white blouse with epaulettes that made it look like part of a uniform. It was tailored to be form fitting around her biceps, shoulders and waist, with plenty of room left up top for some pretty impressively sized boobs.

The blouse was tucked into a pair of black slacks and she wore sensible shoes, so this wasn’t a joke, I think. Her hair was in a Marine-style high and tight haircut and colored a dark, almost cobalt blue. When she turned to look at me, I saw that the color she dyed her hair almost matched the color of her eyes.

Those eyes were locked on me, but flicked to Gwen and back to me again, seemingly not sure which of us to watch closest. On the other side of the car, barely visible over the roofline, was another woman. This one was short, thin and had a touch of oriental lineage in her almond shaped eyes and her midnight black hair. She was watching me too!

“Toni, this guy here is Jack McCoy and the lady with him is his security, Gwen. Jack, Gwen, this is Toni and the less tall one on the other side is Aiko. They are the best damn bodyguards in the country!” Kate announced, introducing us but not, I guess, setting their minds at ease.

It made me want to check my fly, see if I had some food on my shirt or something.

The best defense is a strong offence, or something.

“Toni, will you be around in the mornings? I could use another sparring partner and you look competent.” I asked nicely, pretending not to see her tense up and the muscles at her jaw bunch.

“I am afraid I don’t have enough insurance for something like that ... sir. If I were to injure you, it would be more trouble than it was worth.” Toni said, her voice more feminine that I had guessed it would be. I know, I know, prejudging someone is a no-no, but you should see this woman!

I just smiled at her and nodded. “Well, I already agreed to spar with Gwen, who is new to me, and show her the difference between dojo and street, so maybe you could come along and ... referee.” Not waiting for an answer, I turned back to Cade who was watching me with a scowl on her face.

“Jack, you stop picking on Toni! She is a great bodyguard and a very nice person too. You will not be sparring with her or even teasing her, you understand me? I have seen you and that Marine lunkhead Dean sparring, and none of these people are going to be anywhere near you when you do that. That includes Gwen!” She did the fists on the hips thing again, and she was so damn cute doing it! When she looked past me at Gwen, she looked a little uncomfortable.

“Sorry, Gwen, I shouldn’t have spoken for you. But Jack and Dean are ... they are like nothing I have ever seen. They move so fast, with kicks and punches and knees and ... and I don’t know what, but it is all a blur and it sounds like someone is playing drums on a side of beef! When they are done, there is always at least one of them bleeding or bruised and limping.” Cade tried to explain but I grinned as I saw Gwen look more and more interested instead of less as Cade had intended.

“Fine, you go right ahead and let this lummox beat on you, but don’t ask me for a ride to the emergency room afterwards!” Cade said finally, slapping her hands together as though she was dusting her hands of the whole thing.

Toni didn’t say anything, but she didn’t look quite as hostile so, draw? Sure, I’ll count that as a draw.

Unfortunately, Aiko had come around the car and was standing behind me when I turned to hand Cade into the back of the limo.

She looked whipcord fast and as dangerous as a coiled snake. Her eyes were flat, emotionless and I could see the telltale bulge of a gun under her arm and what looked like the hilt a blade peeking out at her beltline. If Toni was the tank, then Aiko was the rogue.

I nodded my head respectfully and, once Cade was in, helped Kate in and even turned to Gwen, though the gesture turned into a grin when she scowled at me. Ah ... right, she was on the job, no manners allowed.

The two girls had taken the large seat to the rear and left a big spot between them. When I did the noble thing and moved to take the rear-facing seat, Cade snorted and snagged my arm, pulling me to sit between the two.

Once Gwen was in and seated, we pulled away smoothly into some of the heaviest traffic I had ever seen. LA was the worst when it came to highways, but NYC held its own, maybe even exceeded LA on the streets. The ride from the airport to Manhattan’s Murray Hill area, East 37^th and 3^rd Avenue, was a trial of Toni’s patience. I knew because she didn’t bother to keep her comments to other drivers a secret.

“You fucking moron! What, you don’t see me drivin’ here?” She seemed to be particularly hateful towards cabs!

I would have laughed if I had dared ... last thing I wanted was to make her even angrier when she was behind the wheel.

It took well over an hour before we got to the apartment building that Cade and Kate called home. There was an honest-to-goodness doorman, though he lacked the greatcoat and gold braided hat you see in the movies. This guy was more like an extra from the set of the Sopranos.

“Miss Taylor, Miss MacGinty, good evenings to yas.” He said with a smile, holding open the front door to the building.

“Mario, this is Jack McCoy and Gwen, his security. Jack is staying with us for...” she turned to me with a raised eyebrow. Hey, she was pretty good at that!

I just shrugged. “A day, a week, until our honeymoon? A lot depends on you, beautiful.” I said and laughed when she blushed and smacked me on the arm.

“For a while, Mario, for a while.”

“Nice ta meetcha, Mister McCoy.” Mario said warmly, shaking my hand in both of his.

“Jack, please, I hate the Mister McCoy thing. Nice to meet you too, Mario. I bet you have your hands full with these two!”

“No so’s you’d notice, Jack. They good girls, quiet-like, not like some of the folks in dis town.” Mario said with a laugh, grinning at the two.

Cade and Kate lived on the very top, one of two penthouses. When the label told her to find someplace secure, and her best friend Kate was looking too, they pooled their money. With what they had in the bank and including the subsidies that the studio and model management companies were willing to pay to ensure their talent was safe, they had more than enough to buy the penthouse outright. Considering it was three bedrooms, two and a half baths, twenty-five hundred square feet with river and skyline views, the price tag of two point nine had been a steal at the time. With real estate rebounding, Cade assured me, it was worth twice that now.

They were six or seven blocks from Grand Central Station, only a dozen blocks from the studio where Cade made her magic and Wilhelmina, the modeling agency, was only a couple of blocks further, this was a great place for the pair to live. Add in a secure building, RFID locks on the elevator? It didn’t get much better in Manhattan.

Once in the apartment, the girls gave me the nickel tour and showed me around. The central lobby with the single elevator that made it this high had three doors, doubles for each penthouse and a single door for the emergency stairs. The entry opened into a large living room with picture windows looking out over the city skyline. To the left and right were small terraces, each one probably twenty by twenty and sitting on the corner of the building.

Moving to the left took you to a guest bedroom and very large master suite. To the right was a second bedroom, then a modern, spacious kitchen with the stovetop in an island. This was combined with a space that was designed as a dining room and at the far end, there were laundry facilities and another bathroom, this one with a deep sink.

Cade explained that the master bedroom was Kate’s, since she put up more money for the purchase and Cade was gone for longer stretches than Kate. Kate would be gone for a week, back for a month but Cade would leave on tour and be gone for three months at a time.

Cade took the bedroom nearest the kitchen and, like the other guest room, each bedroom had direct access to one of the two corner terraces. The second spare had been left as a spare, though the bed was only a double. There was a big desk with two laptops on it for the ladies to use as a home office that took up the extra room.

Gwen was going to be an issue, I thought, until Toni and Aiko invited her to stay with them. They rented an apartment lower in the building that had three bedrooms and was used for whatever security team was on duty. Toni and Aiko were the primaries and shared a room, but other teams from the firm would relieve them when they wanted a break, vacation, sick time and so on. The replacements would come and stay in one or more of the other rooms. For now, Gwen could make herself comfortable down there with the promise from me that I would contact her if I wanted to leave the building.

I had lost three hours flying from LA to New York, so while it was about six in the evening in LA, it was now nine in New York and the ladies were hungry. Instead of going through the hassle of going out again, Kate phoned in an order from her favorite pizza place and we all just relaxed in the living room, chatting and getting to know one another.

Well, Kate and I were. Cade, I felt comfortable with and had even shared some of my secrets with. She was sitting beside me on the couch, curled up with her legs under her and leaning against my chest. I had one arm around her and the other was resting lightly on Kate’s legs. She had chosen the far end of the couch and had draped her legs over Cade at first, then stretching and placing her feet in my lap with a grin.

The two of them were a lot closer than I had imagined and had an easy intimacy that seemed more than just roommates and friends. Some of the looks that Kate gave Cade, and even one or two I caught Cade shooting Kate, seemed much more like looks that lovers would share.

“So, how long have you two been...” I left that laying out there like a landmine and Cade, bless her heart, dove on it.

“Jack, I didn’t lie to you, I promise! It ... see, when...” she was tongue-tied and I could see her getting frustrated, trying to figure out a way to explain. Kate saved her though, much more self-possessed than Cade.

“When I learned about the attempted kidnapping, and then about her shitty Ex showing up again, I freaked. I have had a crush on Cade damn near since we met in high school. I watched that bitch take advantage of her, then she was so damn blind about the asshole, but I couldn’t be the one to tell her. When this all happened, the party, going to LA, the kidnapping? When she came back, I told her everything. I told her that I love her, have always loved her and that I wanted her to be mine.”

There was absolute silence in the apartment for several, long, minutes. Cade had scooted over and wrapped her arms around Kate who was sitting there crying silent tears.

“Then I guess I am a bit of a third wheel, huh? Look, Cade, I adore you, and I would never stand in the way...”

Cade was back in my arms in a heartbeat, kissing me all over my face and stopping me from talking.

“No, listen, you listen to me, okay? Don’t say that, you aren’t in the way. You aren’t a third wheel! I don’t know if I know what love is, not really, but I do love Kate and I always have. And I think I am falling in love with you too. Kate knows, we talked ... a lot. Kate said that if I decided I loved you, that she would have to learn to love you too because she wasn’t stepping aside for anyone, man or woman!”

I glanced over the top of Cade’s head at Kate and she grinned at me, raising one eyebrow.

Damn, is everyone better at that than me?

“I am not so sure I understand what love is either, Cade, but I adore you. I spend a lot of time thinking about you and I know that I want to see where this goes, where it takes us. If you are going to force me to accept the friendship and attention of a gorgeous supermodel, well, I’ll just have to learn how to deal with it ... to take it like a man.”

Wow! Cade is stronger than she looks ... and I definitely need to do more sit-ups, that punch hurt!

Still, it did get them both laughing and, almost before I knew it, I had a lap full of women, each of them giving me a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

The rest of the evening was odd. Fun, but odd! There was a three-way, tag-team flirting competition going on, but it was light-hearted and fun. Each of us was flirting with another, sometimes tag-teaming and sometime double-teaming a third, but there was an unspoken agreement that we not go too far, too fast. It was difficult for me, at first, my attraction for Cade was what brought me to NYC but Kate was smart, and cute and, if she would just eat a burger or two, she would move from anorexic to gorgeous but it was what it was. The current trend in high fashion was still stick thin.

Aside from some kissing and snuggling, we didn’t push any envelopes and each of us went to bed alone. We didn’t even stay up late, since each had work commitments the following day.

It was exceedingly difficult to get my ass out of bed in the morning, since it was only two-thirty where I had been hanging my hat. This is what I needed to do to adapt quickly though, and I was up and dressed in some work-out clothes as quietly as I could. Cade had left out her access card like she promised and, after a quick call downstairs to Toni and Gwen, we were able to meet up in the lobby.

After a stretch, we all agreed that three miles was enough of a run and we followed Toni down 37^th towards the East River, then turned right on first and right again on 34^th. From there, it was up to Lexington and back to 37^th again and a right turn for a block brought us back to the apartment building again. Toni said she had measured it in a car and it was just slightly over a mile. Three laps gave us what we wanted, but Toni had us keep moving, a slow and easy jog over to St. Varten’s park where we could do our forms and spar. We did end up waiting for Gwen, she was no speedster on that prosthetic foot but she had no quit in her either.

We found a spot out of the way, and away from the kids who were playing field hockey on one of the courts, and set up in a triangle, slowing our breathing and stretching out after the run. We began our forms first, taking our time and doing it right, flowing from one to the next according to our own internal clocks. Mine had always taken the form of music, a slow ¾ time beat and a wordless tune.

When we were all done, relaxed and centered, we set up the ground rules. Half speed at first, but never more than three-quarter speed, and we would pull any strike which could cause real damage. Bruises would be okay, at Toni’s insistence, she was being a bit aggressive this morning, grinning at me as if she was looking forward to dealing out some bruises!

Toni set up across from me, a smile on her face and bouncing on the balls of her feet like a boxer. She was confident so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and was taking her seriously. It is probably a very good thing I did too because as soon as I was set and nodded to her, she launched a very fast front kick designed to knock me on my ass.

Too bad for her that left her trailing foot as her only contact with the ground and her center of gravity pushing forward over her extended leg. Instead of blocking the kick, which would have hurt, I slipped it instead, turning at the hips and doing a little skip kick at her back ankle. Since that back ankle was anchoring the thrust of her kick, the momentum spun her around and she ended up doing a 270-degree spin, landing hard on her left side.

Thankfully, she knew how to land and had used one leg and one out flung arm to break her fall, slapping hard at the ground to break her momentum. She was back on her feet in an instant, her smile gone and a look of determination on her face.

Toni launched a flurry of punches, kicks, knees and elbow strikes that would have probably taken down an opponent at a dojo, but I could see her pulling every one of them. Just before she thought she was going to make contact, she would slow the punch, tightening her muscles to reabsorb some of the force. I couldn’t help but think she would come away from training each time with sore muscles after that kind of self-abuse.

“Toni, stop for a second.” I said, not even breathing hard. I had been slapping her attacks away, avoiding rather than counterattacking.

Toni was breathing hard and seemed annoyed, but she did as I asked and backed off, looking angry.

“How many times have you had to fight someone on the street?” I asked quietly, watching her expression.

She looked down, then shrugged her shoulders and rolled her head on her neck. “A real fight?” she asked, glaring at me. “Once, I took him down with a front kick and then put him in an arm bar until the cops could cuff him. Other than that, it is mostly rabid fans and drunks at clubs.”

“I am not trying to make you mad, but I want you to think about punching me here, in the gut. Go through the motions at three quarter speed and let me show you something.”

She did, moving forward instantly to try and punch me in the stomach. What I did was pray I could react fast enough and watched her fist flash out. I tightened my abs and flinched, moving my hips back half an inch and, luckily, my timing was spot on.

Toni’s punch had been aimed at the center of my stomach, right at the belly button and, like she had been doing, she held back just before the fist would strike, pulling back instead of striking through the target like she would have if striking a heavy bag. My tightening the muscles (in case she actually hit!) and moving my hips back, meant that her punch ended right before my stomach began and all she got was a hyperextended elbow for her trouble.

“FUCK! What the fuck was that?” she yelled, pulling her arm back and massaging her elbow.

I explained what I had seen her do, what she did with almost every strike, and then I explained what I did. I could see a light come on in her head, but she didn’t look happy about it either.

“It is dojo training. It is sparring with people you really don’t want to hurt, people you aren’t supposed to hurt. I go into every single session with Dean knowing that if I fuck up, if I am off by a quarter inch, he is going to hurt me and the same goes true with him. We do get hurt too, though we know each other well enough to that it is rarely serious. The difference between dojo and street is life and death, Toni.”

Gwen, who had been watching the whole thing without saying a word, stepped forward.

“Everything he showed you about your strikes was correct, Toni, and I only say that because, now that I have seen it, I think I have the same issues! We are taught a dozen wrists locks, a hundred ways to twist, lock, pop or otherwise strain limbs and joints, to throw people, but it is always taught to do so safely. It never clicked with me and I was looking forward to making the kid here eat his words. Now I am not so sure.”

“Okay, okay, you made your point. You did real good defending, but you haven’t shown me anything on offence. I want to see if my defense is as fucked up as the rest.” Toni grumped, giving her elbow one last vigorous rub before stepping back and falling into her stance.

Gwen met my eye and shrugged. “Go for it, I need as much of a head start as I can get if I am next!”

I stuck my tongue out at Gwen which got me a surprised laugh, then turned back to Toni and got comfortable.

“Ready, beautiful?” I teased, the look of surprise on her face making me swallow a laugh of my own.

I took a page from Toni’s playbook and flashed a front kick towards her solar plexus. Toni was ready though and her arms shot out, her wrists crossed and hands ready to grab the leg, but I wasn’t playing by the rules. Instead, I let my rear leg slide back to lower my center and my kick went under her block, through her legs and, with a snap of my waist, I was hooking one leg from under her. As she spun to the left, an elbow to her midsection stole her breath and folded her in half. A tap to the rear of her knees brought her to the ground and another tap on her temple marked this session as over.

When I offered a hand to Toni, she stared up at me for a long moment before accepting my offer and grabbing my hand.

“You suck.” she growled, even as she pulled herself up, the scowl on her face making it clear she wasn’t at all happy about this turn of events. “No one has embarrassed me like that since I was a kid.”

“It wasn’t about embarrassing you, Toni, I would never do that. It was three people, sharing training tips to make ourselves better than we were.” I said softly, still holding on to her hand after she was on her feet, not letting her turn away. “Are we okay?”

She looked startled at that, then shook her head. “Of course, we are. I am not that much of a bitch. I am just ... fuck, humbled, I guess, embarrassed, flustered. Go play with Gwen while I get it together.”

I turned to look at Gwen and she was bouncing on her toes, doing that little thumb to the nose thing that Bruce Lee made famous, then beckoning me with a grin.

“Come get some, hotshot!” she crowed, the twinkle in her eye made it obvious she was teasing.

“You killed my sensei! Prepare to die!” I growled back at her, doing my best impression of a four-year-old after watching a Saturday morning Kung Fu movie fest. “AYAYAAAAAA!”

When she started laughing at my dancing, I attacked!

Whoa ... Gwen is totally ticklish and she hits hard when she is embarrassed! We even got Toni laughing with our antics though, so I guess it was all in good fun.

When we did settle down and actually spar, Gwen turned out to be marginally more effective than Toni had been, Aikido being less about striking and more about control, but she had almost as little luck in besting me.

She couldn’t throw me if I didn’t let myself get off center. She couldn’t put me in a submission hold if she couldn’t get a hold of me. I ‘killed’ her a dozen times before we switched to practicing our ground game. There, she lacked the size and the strength to get the needed leverage and she lacked the stamina to wear me out so it was even more one-sided in my favor.

“How about two on one, hotshot?” Toni asked, watching me pin Gwen for the fifth or sixth time. I’ll give Gwen this, there was no quit in her!

“Not without pads. The problem is that with both of you attacking, I will spend most of the time just reacting like my training says I should. That would be okay, as long as there are no surprises. If one of you gets a kick in or a punch in the wrong spot, I might react instinctively and Toni, instinctively, Dean trained me to take no prisoners.”

Toni just stared at me for a moment, then looked over at Gwen who was still laying back, resting on her elbows on the ground. Then, with an inarticulate grunt and a thoughtful nod of her head, she turned to gather the water bottles we brought with us.

When we were done, and were ready to call it quits, all three of us had become, if not friends, then at least friendly, and it was a companionable jog back to the apartment building and to the gym in the basement.

Cade and Kate were up when I came back upstairs to get showered and changed. Cade saw me come in and with a smile, sashayed towards me until she got close enough to smell the sweat and veered off.

“Yeah ... not getting near you like that, unless I am the one that made you like that, sabe?” she said with a laugh, pointing towards the bedroom. “We have to leave in forty minutes, so hurry up, mama needs breakfast!”

After breakfast I rode with Cade to the studio where she was putting the finishing touches on her album. Well, her finishing touches anyway, the engineer was quick to say. The studio had a couple of weeks’ worth of work left to get everything mixed, trimmed, filled, spot corrections made and so on! They were even shooting video of Cade singing, the band performing, the sound engineers and studio pros too!

The place was pretty impressive and the mixing board, I think that is what the guy called it, had like a billion switches and buttons and sliders. The guy played it like a piano though, knowing where each of the controls were without even looking, most of the time. It was almost as entertaining watching him and his facial expressions as it was watching and listening to Cade. And no, I would never admit that to Cade, do I look stupid?

It wasn’t until just before lunch that I found out her teasing about my singing wasn’t a tease after all. When I demurred, she got clingy and, when I outright refused, she got weepy! Funny how those big ol’ tears cleared up fast when I caved in.

I did wring one concession out of her, and I was absolutely not budging. When I went so far as to get her producer down to the studio and tell him in no uncertain terms that I would buy his label and fire his ass if he screwed me, I got my way. My name could be in the liner notes, but not my face. I did not need the notoriety.

The song she wanted to sing was ‘Just Give Me a Reason’ by P!nk with me taking the part that had originally been sung by Nate Ruess. It was a song she had wanted to cover for a long time but had never had someone she really wanted to sing with.

I had to admit to not being familiar with it but, when the engineer played the original, it sounded very familiar. Not a difficult set of lyrics and not anything particularly deep either. There were some bits where you really had to hit the note perfectly in time with the music or it just sounded off, so technically, it had some appeal.

The thing is, individually, the elements considered on their own merits, there wasn’t a lot to recommend this song. When you listened to P!nk belting it out though, it just gets stuck between your ears and tries to escape through your tapping toes and strumming fingers. That made it a good song.

We ran through the song a few times to get used to singing together, to get our timing down, the whole time with me waiting for someone to jump out with a camera, to say that this was a big prank.

In fact, I was so nervous that Cade took me into a small sound booth that the studio used to dub in corrections or voice over work, and she pulled the blinds so that the rest of the studio was blocked out. There seemed like there was barely enough room for the two of us but, when she wrapped her arms around me, it didn’t seem all that crowded after all. Cade gave me a kiss that curled my toes and then pushed a button on the small control board. The lead-in music filled the tiny room, seeming to surround us completely.

Her voice filled the small room and I could feel it, feel her giving it her all. The chorus was the hook that got your toes tapping and made you want to sing along.

Just give me a reason, just a little bit’s enoughJust a second we’re not broken just bent, and we can learn to love again
It’s in the stars, it’s been written in the scars on our hearts
We’re not broken just bent, and we can learn to love again{br}

This is where I came in, closing my eyes and trying to do my best, willing myself to sing without thinking about people hearing me, about Cade watching.

She came in exactly on time, blending her voice with mine, wrapping it around me and dancing in and out of the verse in perfect synchronization. It is hard to describe the feeling that filled me, made my heart and head both feel like they were stuffed full to the very brim, ready to burst.

When we finished, and that last note died away, it was as if something was lost, something priceless and wonderful and heartbreaking. I could tell by the tears in her eyes that she felt it too, or I hoped she did. Her kiss went a long, long way in convincing me that she had been there with me, riding that incredible feeling.